Model of Destruction
By NED B. HUNTER Homeland Security is using Aeneas' storm recovery in ads on being prepared Their workplace reduced to rubble strewn across South Church Street, employees of Aeneas Internet and Telephone questioned whether the business could survive the May 2003 tornadoes. "I felt like all the work we had put into this business was gone," said Randy Mills, telecommunications switch operator for Aeneas' telephone division. "That no matter how hard we worked on it, we could never get it back." But the company did "get it back." So quickly, in fact, that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has chosen Jackson based-Aeneas to be part of its new "Testimony" ad campaign, honoring the company's dramatic recovery. The campaign is part of the department's plan to show the need for being prepared for all emergencies, not just terrorism. "Emergency preparedness is often discussed in a very abstract way," said Lara Shane, readiness campaign director for Homeland Security. "Aeneas' story can really help bring preparedness to light." Now housed inside a renovated, multi-story former church building on Cumberland Street, Aeneas sits just 16 months removed from being a pile of debris just a few blocks away. With the smell of natural gas from its generator lingering in the air following the devastating storms, Aeneas owner Jonathan Harlan, Chief Information Officer Jason Warren and Mills began restringing miles of telephone and Internet cables. Within 24 hours the company was able to restore e-mail and Web hosting services to customers. Within eight hours, the company had restored its long distance service. After only 48 hours, all high-speed Internet customers were back online, and within five days, service from the company (still without a primary office) was fully restored. Danny Moore, owner of Moore Pumps in Friendship, was without long distance service for only about 45 minutes. "At about 8:15 (a.m. the next day) we realized we had no long distance phone service," Moore said. "By 9 a.m., Aeneas called to tell us what happened and gave us an access code to let us make out-going calls." Aeneas handles three 800 long distance phone lines for the Crockett County business. Despite the incredible amount of physical labor needed to restring the company's telecommunications lines, Aeneas' real success story is based on pre-planning. Prepared for disaster Now located in the renovated Cumberland Presbyterian Church, Aeneas has expanded its disaster preparedness systems. Shielded inside the company's icy-cold basement, racks of telephone routing switchers, Internet equipment and high speed data processors click and whir as thousands of data signals pass through the lines each second. The brain cells of Aeneas, each piece of data processing equipment has twin sisters that will take over if the primary piece fails for any reason. Data also is backed up by other off-site computers and on portable data storage systems. "All our data is mirrored," Harlan said. "All our server activity copies itself in real time in Memphis, New York and other off-site locations." Redundancy is Aeneas' motto. "All of our Internet pages are backed up on large data storage devices, tapes, CD ROMs, anything we can carry off-site," Mills said. On Friday, May 9, 2003, just five days after the tornado struck, Aeneas was operating at 100 percent capacity, Mills said. "The tornado missed us, but we were out of power for about six days," said Bill Pflaum, owner of Highland Place Bed and Breakfast Inn in Jackson. "When the power came back, the (Web) page was already back up (and) all of our guest names and addresses of our guests and companies that have stayed here, about 400, were back." 'Bootstrap company' Aeneas is a sole proprietorship owned by Jackson native Harlan. The 40-year-old started the company after the federal government intervened in the telephone industry in 1996. "We are a child of the Telephone Deregulation Act," he said. Harland maxed out his credit cards and most every other line of credit possible to acquire the $67,000 line of credit needed to start his company. "It was a bootstrap company," Harlan said, laughing. He declined to give specific revenue figures for this fiscal year. The company, which began as an Internet service provider, started offering telephone services in 1999 and now offers several communications services. Aeneas, whose client base is anchored in West Tennessee, grew from 500 clients in its first year to nearly 10,000 today. The company bills as little as $5.95 a month for a five-hour-per-month Internet account to several thousand dollars per month for large corporate accounts with several services. "We started with physicians, lawyers, insurance people, anyone who had multiple offices in many cities," Harlan said. With the Internet still in its infancy in 1996, Harlan's vision of being the first Internet service provider in rural West Tennessee counties, and the second in Jackson, nearly assured his success. USIT, now Earthlink, was Jackson's first Internet provider, Harlan said. "At that time there was no BellSouth Internet access, no AOL (America Online). They didn't exist," he said. Aeneas did not contact Homeland Security asking to be honored. The department found Aeneas' story on the company Web site, where the tornado can be heard leveling the building. "Someone's phone got knocked off the hook, hit an extension, and recorded the sounds of the tornado," Harlan said. Harlan has no plans of expanding Aeneas past the boundaries of Tennessee, saying "a big part of our success is the proximity to our customers." He also has no plans of taking the company that he consistently refers to as "we" public. Despite Aeneas' success, Harlan said a company's fight for survival never ends. "The current challenge is the shifting regulatory environment which refuses to stay static," he said. "DSInet, BlueStar, US Internet, these were all companies bought for pennies on the dollar. I still operate this business running scared." Warren was the first to learn of becoming part of Homeland Security's campaign ads that will run on television and in national newspapers. "I thought they were salesmen calling," he said. While the company feels gratified by Homeland Security's recognition, Warren summed up the importance of Aeneas' remarkable recovery this way: "The main thing I was excited about was that we went through all this and now we can tell other people how to be prepared," he said. Ned Hunter, (731) 425-9641 About Aeneas Aeneas Internet and Telephone offers: Traditional local and long distance telephone service. Broadband digital subscriber lines - high-speed Internet service. Voice over Internet protocol - telephone calls made over the Internet without traditional phone switching equipment. Aeneas is the only company in Tennessee currently providing this service. Source: Jonathan Harlan, Aeneas owner Being prepared Aeneas can recover from disasters quickly because: The air conditioner motor that cools equipment has two backups. The telephone system has two power plant backups. A 6-foot-tall rack of batteries will provide four days of power during any outages. Each connection to the Jackson Energy Authority and BellSouth, from which Aeneas rents lines to enter buildings, has two backups. All data is backed up off site. Source: Aeneas
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